Sunday, July 02, 2017

Liberalism, secular religion, vulnerability

There is a terrific review of a new book on liberalism over at First Things. The book is by a Polish philosopher named Ryszard Legutko, who was a dissident under the communist government and who believes that communism and liberalism share a similar secular religious framework.

The review, by Adrian Vermeule, is difficult to improve on, so I will limit myself to some commentary on one of the key points raised and then encourage you to go and read the whole thing yourselves.

What I found most interesting was the discussion of some contradictions within liberalism. For instance, liberalism emphasises both a materialist determinism (i.e. everything we do is predetermined by forces of history, genetics etc.) and a belief in the radically autonomous individual, including the idea that individuals, absent certain social conditions, will use this autonomous freedom to choose the good. How can you have a radically self-determining individual if you believe that everything is materially predetermined? One part of liberal philosophy insists that the individual is radically predetermined, the other that he only has dignity if he is radically self-determined.

The most interesting contradiction discussed, and one that is complained about all the time in alt-right discussions on social media, is why liberals seem uninterested in seriously illiberal policies in places like Saudi Arabia but come down heavily on mildly illiberal policies in places like Hungary. I think the answer given by Legutko, as summarised by Vermeule, is very interesting:

Why do Western liberal academics and EU technocrats object so stridently to the mild illiberalism of the Fidesz parliamentary party in Hungary, while saying little or nothing about Saudi Arabia and other monarchical or authoritarian nations, nominal allies of the West, who routinely control, punish, and dominate women, gays, and religious dissenters? Why are the EU technocrats, whose forte is supposed to be competence, so very bumbling, making policy mistake after policy mistake? How is it possible that while the sitting president of the United States squarely opposed same-sex marriage just a few years ago, the liberal intellectuals who supported him passionately also condemn any opposition to same-sex marriage as bigotry, rooted in cultural backwardness? Why was the triumph of same-sex marriage followed so rapidly by the opening of a new regulatory and juridical frontier, the recognition of transgender identity?

Legutko helps us understand these oddities. We have to start by understanding that liberalism has a sacramental character. “The liberal-democratic mind, just as the mind of any true communist, feels an inner compulsion to manifest its pious loyalty to the doctrine. Public life is full of mandatory rituals in which every politician, artist, writer, celebrity, teacher or any public figure is willing to participate, all to prove that their liberal-democratic creed springs spontaneously from the depths of their hearts.” The basic liturgy of liberalism is the Festival of Reason, which in 1793 placed a Goddess of Reason (who may or may not have been a prostitute conscripted for the occasion, in one of the mocking double entendres of Providence) on the holy altar in the Church of Our Lady in Paris. The more the Enlightenment rejects the sacramental, the more compulsively it re-enacts its founding Festival, the dawning of rationality.

Light is defined by contrast, however, so the Festival requires that the children of light spy out and crush the forces of darkness, who appear in ever-changing guises, before the celebration can be renewed. The essential components of the Festival are twofold: the irreversibility of Progress and the victory over the Enemy, the forces of reaction. Taken in combination, these commitments give liberalism its restless and aggressive dynamism, and help to make sense of the anomalies. Fidesz in Hungary is more threatening than the Saudi monarchy, even though the latter is far less liberal, because Fidesz represents a retrogression—a deliberate rejection of liberalism by a nation that was previously a member in good standing of the liberal order. The Hungarians, and for that matter the Poles, are apostates, unlike the benighted Saudis, who are simple heretics. What is absolutely essential is that the clock of Progress should never be turned back. The problem is not just that it might become a precedent and encourage reactionaries on other fronts. The deeper issue is that it would deny the fundamental eschatology of liberalism, in which the movement of History may only go in one direction. It follows that Brexit must be delayed or defeated at all costs, through litigation or the action of an unelected House of Lords if necessary, and that the Trump administration must be cast as a temporary anomaly, brought to power by voters whose minds were clouded by racism and economic pain. (It is therefore impossible to acknowledge that such voters might have legitimate cultural grievances or even philosophical objections to liberalism.)

The puzzle of the EU technocrats, on this account, is no puzzle at all. They are so error-prone, even from a technocratic point of view, at least in part because they are actually engaged in a non-technocratic enterprise that is pervasively ideological, in the same way that Soviet science was ideological. Their prime directive is to protect and expand the domain of liberalism, whether or not that makes for technical efficiency.

Liberalism needs an enemy to maintain its sacramental dynamism. It can never rest in calm waters, basking in the day of victory; it is essential that at any given moment there should be a new battle to be fought. The good liberal should always be able to say, “We have made progress, but there is still much to do.” This is why the triumph of same-sex marriage actually happened too suddenly and too completely. Something else was needed to animate liberalism, and transgenderism has quickly filled the gap, defining new forces of reaction and thus enabling new iterations and celebrations of the Festival. And if endorsement and approval of self-described “gender identity” becomes a widely shared legal and social norm, a new frontier will be opened, and some new issue will move to the top of the public agenda, something that now seems utterly outlandish and is guaranteed to provoke fresh opposition from the cruel forces of reaction—polygamy, perhaps, or mandatory vegetarianism.

If this is true, then it gives liberalism both a strength and a weakness. The strength is that people hold to liberal beliefs like a religion, and therefore as a source of meaning that is difficult to step away from. The weakness is that the force of the religious belief depends on an "eschatology" in which there is always a progress toward an ever more radical application of liberalism in society. Therefore, once liberalism is forced back it is vulnerable to collapse. In other words, if liberalism is seen to be obviously stopped, and some aspect of traditionalism restored, it is likely to trigger a psychological demoralisation amongst liberalism's adherents.

Liberalism needs opposition, it needs a force of reaction to battle against, but it needs to always win.

So we must not be content with being "house traditionalists" who exist merely to play a role within "the liturgy of liberalism." We need to be serious about building to the point that we are obviously regaining ground. At that point, liberals become vulnerable to psychological confusion and demoralisation. There may not be great depths of resistance once they lose a sense of inevitable progress.

11 comments:

Since at least the 1960s, the only thing conservatives have accomplished is to temporarily pause liberal progress. I can't think of an instance where they have reinstated a traditional rule once the liberals won ground.

I think you're correct. Things have gone well for liberals. There has been reaction at times, but liberals have triumphed. That, perhaps, is the only way that liberalism retains its religious character as described above.

It means that the restoration has to be more determined. It can't be left up to individuals alone to take a stand, instead it must be a movement. And it must be a movement that is clear enough in its values, and in the rightness of its cause, that it will bear the inevitable backlash - that it will dig in so to speak. It has to be strong enough to withstand the media and mainstream public opinion.

It won't be that difficult to find the ground to take a stand. Simply asserting that there are two sexes, two polarities to human existence - man and woman - will be enough. That will be enough to mark the movement as being apostate.

We should try to find ways as well to aid the patriotic movements in Europe - if a Le Pen were to win in France, or the Hungarians and Poles were to hold on to their national existence - that would be a claiming of ground.

Social conservatives and traditionalists have to start playing to win. Up till now they have at best been playing for a draw. Once you decide to play for a draw you throw away any chance of a victory.

To switch from a cricketing analogy to a military analogy, you cannot win a war unless you give your troops an occasional unequivocal victory. Napoleon seemed invincible until the Archduke Charles defeated him at the Battle of Aspern-Essling in 1809. After that everybody knew Napoleon could be defeated and his final ruin was only a matter of time. The French army had been seen to retreat.

This is why the triumph of same-sex marriage actually happened too suddenly and too completely. Something else was needed to animate liberalism, and transgenderism has quickly filled the gap, defining new forces of reaction and thus enabling new iterations and celebrations of the Festival

That's an interesting point. Of course the transgender battle is now all but won as well. What will be be next? It won't be polygamy. That battle can be won virtually without a shot being fired. It will have to be something far more shocking. I think we can guess what that will be.

Yes, good point. I notice, though, that some transsexuals are demanding that heterosexual men not discriminate against them when it comes to dating preferences. It sounds outlandish now, but who knows? Maybe in a year or two men won't be allowed to publicly express a preference for those born biologically as women.

maybe in a year or two men won't be allowed to publicly express a preference for those born biologically as women.

Yes, I agree, and I think we really are only a year or two away from that. In fact it's already started. Only a hateful bigot could prefer a real woman.

This is one of the most hopeful signs actually because it's one of the few things that could cause a real split in the Coalition of the Fringes.The trans thing is clearly very bad for feminism. If there's no such thing as a woman, if being female is just a social construct, feminism collapses. And some feminists have started to figure this out. There has already been some extraordinarily vicious feminist in-fighting on this issue, involving high-profile feminists like Julie Burchill and Germaine Greer.

Yes, and the timing is good, given that that white women are already starting to be targeted by the left (as occupying a privileged place within intersectional politics). So there may not be much status left for white women on the left - attacked for "white privilege" and having their identity as women deconstructed.

In a normal society, this level of decadence would lead to revolution. The common people are able to find enough diversions, entertainment and enjoyment to not demand a change of regime. Maybe if all the electrucal signals go dark due to a solar flare or widespread famine of epidemics occur, it appears society will slowly coast along to decadent oblivion.

I ordered this book after reading the review you linked to. It was fascinating and I read it in a single day (it's only 180 pages). However his term "Liberal Democracy" is not a good one because there's nothing Democratic about this movement. Comteianism is a better choice, IMO.